


She is a (Mostly) Open Book

by wiltedneck



Category: Original Work
Genre: Advice, Ambiguous Relationships, Autobiographical, Friendship, Gen, Metaphors, Prose Poem, Relationship Advice, Sad, Significant Others, Trust, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-14
Packaged: 2018-02-04 14:23:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1782208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wiltedneck/pseuds/wiltedneck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Advice to those who want to get to know you (or me, as the case may be). I think this is a pretty easily generalizable topic. How does one get closer to another person? Learn the story of their life? This is something approaching a prose poem describing what that process looks like to me (reading an old, worn, damaged book).</p>
            </blockquote>





	She is a (Mostly) Open Book

Laid, cracked open, spine bent and worn on the left; straight and rigid to the right. She is mostly straightforward and you may flip through her histories and read where she has been, her thoughts, her plans, her crushed dreams and bones, what she was able to rebuild with each tearing down (typically accompanied by a tearing up). She is simple, perhaps written in run-ons, but ever-breathing, feeling, moving.

But remember to be gentle, because she's had some rough handling. There was that leaky pipe, which accidentally dripped all of her tears onto her pages for days. Some pages swelled and stuck, as they dried, tight to one another. They are blind spots on her public narrative, though she notes that e-copies of her book exist, somewhere, and that select few read those unblemished pages. Don't pull at her water-glued pages. They are not permanent, but they are also delicate. They require time, patience, careful touches. They require experts and rooms with specific temperatures and humidities. Let her help you find these measurements; she knows her tears well, though she may deny it.

There was that time she tried to press a flower between her pages, but didn't close her own book, and in doing so, never applied enough pressure to dry and isolate the petals. The fungus spread over words on pages on either side of the flower. It began to rot and brown and blacken, taking paragraphs of life with it, giving life to another form. She liked to think her ink gave that fungus some special quality, but more likely it just slowly poisoned those cells.

Then, of course, there are those pages turned over and over again, by friends and family and professors and interviewers and acquaintances. Polite tales, humorous anecdotes, lists of favorite songs. Eventually these pages wear the ink to smudges, but she could read these pages blindfolded and doesn't need the lettering to remind her.

Let her book lie open. Sift through her with gentle hands. Do not move quickly; it is more likely you will tear her than she will disappear. Help her pen the pages to the right, her handwriting could always use some help. Look after her Ts and Is and Ps and Qs; make sure she minds them or crosses them or dots them or whatever it is she must do. Read her, savor her and she will share herself in these pages with you.

**Author's Note:**

> Please hit me up with feedback! If you didn't like it, I'd love to get tips on how to improve and create something you would enjoy, and if you did like it I'd love to hear why or know if there were other areas I could work on.


End file.
